


and the proof is in this song

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: McFly, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, OT4-brotherly love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:53:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at how Niall might've come to write that epic Midnight Memories tearjerker called Don't Forget Where You Belong. Or, no one loves One Direction more than Niall Horan loves One Direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the proof is in this song

**Author's Note:**

> Cameos from 3/4ths of the band McFly. You don't need to know them to understand this story. But it would enrich your life if you got on that like, right now.

Writing a song with McFly.

Niall grins to himself. Another dream to check right off his list, then. Sometimes he can't believe his own luck, has to pinch the inside of his elbow, rub a thumb over the purpling bruise and remind himself that _yeah, this is your life, how fucking sick is that?!_

This is one of those times, definitely.

There's a knock at the door of Niall's hotel room. He grins once more to himself, bounces a little on his heels, then goes to answer.

"Doug and Danny'll meet you in ten," Paul says when Niall swings open the door. "Tom's here already, but he's popped in to say hello to the rest of the boys. You good?"

Niall's smile widens. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, Paul, thanks."

Paul looks at him for a moment, a little harried but fond as always. His lips twitch, and he claps a hand on Niall's shoulder. "They've got what, four number ones?" he asks.

"Seven," Niall automatically corrects. "And fifteen in the top ten."

Paul snorts. "Alright, Wikipedia," he says. "Point is, you're a big shot now, aren't ya?" He considers Niall for a moment, then reaches over, messes up his fringe, palming at his head like he's an overgrown puppy. "Enjoy it, lad."

Niall is unaccountably touched. "Thanks, Paul." And this is another thing that Niall can't quite believe, that there are people now who care enough about Niall that they're happy when he gets something good. People outside his family, outside Mullingar. People who know what its like to have a dream happen because dreams are happening for them, too.

The door snicks shut and Niall runs a hand down his face, feeling the stretch at his cheeks, the happiness literally flooding his skin.

There's a pad of paper and a pen on the hotel desk. Niall grabs them in one hand, plucks his guitar up from the corner with the other, then sits on the edge of his hotel bed.

Stares at the clock in anticipation and waits for one of the coolest days of his life to begin.

 

|

 

"What was your first concert?"

It's one of the first questions they'd asked each other that week at the bungalow, sprawled in a lopsided circle, looking up at the stars that were somehow clearer in Cheshire than in Bradford or Doncaster or Wolverhampton, a bit sharper than in Mullingar even.

Niall remembers answering Busted, the same as Louis, feeling a rush of excitement, laughing like a maniac when Louis gave him a victory thump round the head. Remembers sitting with him later, discussing the injustice of Busted's breakup, reminiscing about particularly cool songs while scrolling through each other's iPods. Remembers making a face at some of Louis' choices and defending some of his own with vigor, building the foundation of a bond that even then felt solid and tender in turns, like a vegetable growing roots in soil.

"Oh, this was _wicked_ \--" A press to the play button, and then the opening chords of One for the Radio blared, Louis' head pillowed against Niall's shoulder, his knee knocking Niall's in tandem with the snap-thud-whack of the drum beat.

"Yeah, 's one of my favorites," Niall'd said, humming a bar. "Love them--you know Tom used to write with Busted, too? Probably why I like McFly. Good tunes."

Louis was quiet for a time, Niall recalls. Such a rare occurrence back then. He'd gone still, then in a voice uncharacteristically hesitant, almost self-deprecating, he'd asked:

"D'you think--d'you ever wonder how awesome it'd be if we did something like this? Like." He'd waved his hand impatiently. "Not just charting really well, or being famous, but. Like being a proper band. Writing songs that matter to us. Doing it together and saying fuck off to everyone else."

Niall had laughed, the thought so intangible, so unbelievable that it'd felt like a wisp. Something too big to really catch hold of, let alone understand.

"Sure," he'd said gamely, then let himself run his hand through Louis' floppy hair. "Sure, Louis, why not?"

Now, three years later, three lifetimes of surprises and impossibilities later, Niall still feels like it's too big a thought. Feels it sometimes rising in his chest like the Thames in the rain, ready to spill over into wide eyes and caught breath and laughter ripped free into the skies.

He never knew, seventeen and scared and excited and already so dangerously optimistic, that people could say things and they could come true, that it could be that easy. He's glad of not knowing, glad that every new blessing is something fresh, still strikes through his heart, a jolt of joy.

A text from Louis comes through: _Crashed the Wedding or Air Hostess?_ and Niall thinks again of looking down at his friend's face, the uncertainty and barely-restrained hope.

 _Somethin even better, mate_ he texts back, and it's not a lie.

 

|

 

Danny’s wearing a One Direction t-shirt under his coat. It’s one of the old designs, too, a particularly awkward Niall staring out from Danny’s left pec. He grins proudly at Niall’s borderline horrified face.

“Was fifty pounds, didja know?” he asks. “Reckon your face is worth at least ten quid then.”

Tom peeks out from behind Danny, hefting his guitar case in greeting. “Complex math for our man Daniel,” he says dryly. “ You should feel proud, mate.”

Niall beams, raising a hand to say hello. “Cheers, Tom. And Mr. Jones. Nice shirt.”

Danny laughs. “I’ll give it to me second cousin,” he says. “Or to Judd, think you’re his favorite.”

Tom shakes his head. “Don’t let Sugarscape hear you blaspheme, Danny. Pudd forever, and all that.”

Speaking of Dougie--an instant later, he comes crashing through the door, bandana pulled low over his eyes. “Had to show Zayn and Louis a video,” he says mysteriously when the others look at him.

Niall knows from earlier experience that this means he will soon have to sit through an hour of Youtube failvids, sandwiched between both Zayn and Louis as they cackle their heads off.

“Thanks, man,” he says, and from Dougie’s mischievous squint, Niall can tell he’s picked up on the sarcasm.

“Doug’s found this one of a lady on the toilet singing,” Tom says, opening up his case. “Think it’s going to be his ringtone soon enough.”

Dougie makes a fart noise in response. He, too, kneels, opening up his own guitar case.

“You brought a real poet along with ya,” Niall says, cracking a grin. He strums a hand across his guitar strings, letting the dischordant sound fill the room as Danny and Tom bend their heads close and investigate the state of their respectively tuned instruments.

“Don’t be fooled by the toot,” Danny says absently. “Doug’s been writing some firecrackers for the new album.” He glances up, pride evident in his eyes, and though Dougie scoffs, Niall recognizes the quietly pleased look on his face.

“Yeah, Louis and Liam’ve been doing the same for ours,” Niall says, unable to keep his smile from widening. “It’s so cool, man. And scary, a bit. Coz it’s like--” he stops a minute, self-conscious, not sure if Tom or Danny or Dougie will even care.

Tom takes a heavy seat next to Niall, swinging his guitar around and settling it comfortably in his lap. “It’s like what?” he asks, friendly, interested.

“Like this is the first album that’s going to be _ours_ ,” Niall says, and there it is, that familiar wonder and jittery apprehension running through his limbs.

Danny and Tom trade looks. “Yeah, mate,” Danny says kindly, sitting on the other side of Niall, mattress dipping. “We know exactly how that is.”

Dougie looks up from the floor where he’s settled, bass across his knees. “I was fifteen when I joined the band,” he offers, seemingly apropos of nothing.

Niall knows this; Niall knows an embarrassingly lot of information when it comes to them. When he first met the band, he’d been unable to do anything other than stand in the entrance of the XFactor green room, singing their own songs back to them loudly. Louis had taken the piss for fucking ages after.

“Yeah?” Niall asks. “I was about seventeen myself.”

Dougie absently nudges Tom’s foot with his own, then Danny’s. “Took me a long time to feel like I was--actually in a band. Like I had a right to be there, ‘coz of my own talent, or whatever. Took me even longer to feel like I deserved more than that. Like, everything I’ve got now.”

He smiles ruefully, and Niall remembers reading about rehab a year or two back, the way Dougie’s come back from something tougher than taking third place in XFactor, how that time proved that he and his bandmates were a proper family, because how could they not be, after something like that?

“My point is, young Whore-an,” now Dougie smiles cheekily, “People grow. Poop happens. As does life. But if you’re a very good boy or you try very hard--” here, Tom traps one of Dougie’s feet between his own, a silent encouragement, “--then you get some pretty awesome chances to do very cool things. All on your own.” He kicks Tom and Tom releases him with a curse.

“Don’t be too scared of it, okay, dude?” Dougie tells Niall, and there’s an intense sort of gravity to his voice that makes Niall listen.

“Yeah,” Niall says. He nods. “Yeah, okay.” There’s silence, broken only by Danny accidentally choking on the mint he’d just picked up off Niall’s pillow. They all laugh for about ten minutes at Danny’s expense.

And then they get to work.

 

|

 

Of course, work with the boys of McFly is at least three solid hours of just jamming to whatever’s been on their minds recently.

Niall likes it, though. He’s got the rest of the day off, done with press and photocalls, and he’s been aching for some time to try new things without practicing for tour.

Tom and Danny are a laugh as always, quick wit and easy banter, with a nice dose of wisdom that sometimes throws Niall for a loop, reminds him that he’s working with a band that lives and breathes music, that loves each other first but music as a close second, that has had to figure out how to survive in an industry that doesn’t always prioritize things the same way.

Dougie’s more spacey when it comes to jamming. He’ll twang a bass line, sing a line or two of something in a voice that, while not as naturally well-trained as Tom or Danny’s, is pure and clean. But more often than not, he’s flipping through the songbook that Tom’s brought, drawing little symbols or adding snatches of words.

It’s when Danny’s cooking up an electro-funk version of Kiss You, Tom helping when he can in between bouts of spasmodic laughter, that Dougie finally speaks:

“Ballad or uptempo?”

It takes a minute for Niall to recalibrate his mind, still caught on the easy back-and-forth of Tom and Danny, so similar to Louis and Liam when they’ve caught on a particularly good hook, a give and take, a process with such a steady cadence that it’s difficult to tell when it alters till it’s already changed, turned into whatever new thing they’ve just cooked up.

Niall thinks of singing with Zayn, taking the low harmonies while Zayn lets his voice weave in and out, soaring high, needle sharp. Thinks of the way that Harry sometimes catches his eye in concert when he sings the line beneath Niall during Moments and Little Things, strong and steady, a safety net even as their voices blend and turn into something altogether new.

He wonders if it’s even possible to do things like this with people who aren’t the best friends you’ve ever had. Who don’t have your trust more than anyone else on the planet.

“Mid-tempo, I think,” Niall finally says. “Would be cool, I think. To do stuff that’s--not always dancey, not always slow. Somethin’ you can sing in the car.”

Dougie nods. “Yeah,” he says. “But also, something you can sing at Wembley.” He grins, sudden, bright. “With any luck we’ll both be on world tours next year. Let’s do like, a stadium song.”

Danny jostles Niall’s shoulder. “Yeah, man! Epic. A proper anthem.” He strums a few easy chords. “Nothing too fancy. Nice and simple, even.”

“Should be your nickname, dude,” Tom snickers. Danny makes a rude gesture.

Niall hums. “What about--” he takes the pad and pen, scribbles a few chords. Danny’s eyebrows furrow. Tom gives him a weird look.

To Niall, he says: “Think we already released that song, Nialler. Made a saucy music video in the rain.” Danny’s eyebrows furrow even more.

“Dude,” Tom says, looking faintly alarmed. “Heart Never Lies. Our song. The one we sing like, all the time. Car crash. Your curls dripping wet. Catching lung fever after...”

Danny’s brow clears. “Right,” he says sheepishly. Dougie snorts and throws a balled-up piece of paper at Danny’s head.

“No, just--” Niall taps the paper. “It’s just a really easy and recognizable chord progression. And it’d be a nice, like--homage. Payin’ respect to a great song. But over top--”

He goes back to the guitar, playing the familiar notes but humming something different, a strain of something that’d come to him in the shower a few days ago.

Tom’s ears perk up. “Ah,” he says approvingly. He asks Niall to hum the bars again, and when he complies, writes the notes on the pad. “So we’ve got this--” he points to the first notes Niall had written, “kind of like a driving force underneath, and then this--” he points to the most recent notes, “as the melody guiding the lyrics.”

“Metaphor,” Niall beams. “McFly and One D in a single song. Y’know, parallel.”

Danny looks delighted at this, and immediately bends his head over the pad with Tom. Dougie wanders over the keyboard in the corner, plonking a few notes out as he stares pensively out the window.

Intermittently, the song being created falls over him, and in waves, Niall can feel what it will be. Something thunderous and soft, amps and applause all at once. A story, a journey, a roadtrip, a movie montage, all in three minutes of guitar and keyboard and drums and their voices.

He envisions a stadium. A mass of colors and movement, and a convergence of light on five figures.

When it’s time for dinner, Niall is buzzing under his skin. They’ve got a workable frame, like a skeleton just waiting to flesh out with muscle and blood. He thinks of going downstairs, getting in the people carrier with his bandmates, ordering burgers and chips, knowing that upstairs in this hotel room there’s something amazing waiting to exist.

“Year 3000,” he whispers into Louis’ unruly hair at dinnertime, and if the smile that follows after is swallowed up, the happiness bubbling up in his chest is not.

 

|

 

The lyrics are what trips them up.

"How do you put it into words?" Niall asks. It's not just a technical question. When there's so much to pull out of his head and heart, to spin into actual sentences and turns of phrase, it's difficult to see where to begin.

Tom makes a thoughtful noise, leaned up against the headboard. He's writing in his book, pencil scribbling. Dougie's sprawled across the bed, staring at the ceiling. Danny sits on the edge of the bed next to Niall, thumbing out notes on the guitar, trying out different tempos and arrangements.

"When you've got a concept," Tom says slowly, adjusting his glasses, "It's easier to build a song around it. But when you've got a, like--image? A really strong lyric you wanna use to anchor the whole thing? It's even easier."

Niall wonders. He's not the cleverest with words. Louis and Harry are probably the funniest, and Zayn's the most thoughtful. He and Liam are mostly straightforward. Prefer to say what they mean, even if they sound--inelegant.

He closes his eyes. Calls to mind a timeline, a living, sinuous thing that changes, flashes image after image in his head:

Boys who went from strangers to brothers. Brothers who went from teenagers to popstars. Popstars who went from silhouettes against individual spotlights to a skyline of bodies pressed against one another, arms slung around shoulders, heads tilted together.

“Home is where we begin,” Niall says slowly. “Something like that--something about how, city to city, and it’s all home, because home is us. It’s where we started, and where we stay. How we’ll end.”

Niall tries not to like, actually bite his tongue at that. He doesn’t like to think about the end. If he has his way, he’ll be 28, then 38, then 48 and older, playing What Makes You Beautiful to thousands. He thinks his father’s aged pretty well--chances are it could actually happen.

Dougie looks up at this, pumps a fist. “Wait,” he says. “Dude, that’s it. Hold on.” He points to Tom. “Remember that line in Home is Where the Heart Is?”

Danny looks distraught. “Motion in the Ocean,” Dougie clarifies, shaking his head. “You suck, man.”

Tom is tapping his chin. “Home is where we started, it’s where we belong,” he tries slowly. Niall’s more of a Radio:Active man himself (a surefire marker of his shit taste, according to Louis, but Louis actually listens to his Nickelback album so who’s he to talk) but he remembers this song. It’s pure McFly, lots of guitar, lyrics that read true, that burrow deep and feel like a promise.

“Don’t forget where you belong,” Niall blurts out. “And repeat it. Like a refrain. That’s the main message--you know where home is. You know where you’re meant to be. Don’t lose sight of it.”

“If you ever feel alone, don’t. You were never on your own.” Now it’s Tom, staring at his songbook. “Don’t forget where you belong, because the proof is in this song.”

Niall’s fingertips light up, energy igniting from the inside out. There’s a click that happens when the lyrics come together, this small snippet, just a few lines but already bigger than anything Niall’s ever sung before. It’s not just pretty wordsmithing or fun meaningless pop. It’s what he feels, all he knows, a curtain drawn back to reveal the thank-you letter he’s constantly writing to this life he lives.

Dougie flops back down on the bed. “That’d be an awesome chorus,” he says confidently. “And then the verses, it’d be all the stuff--touring, and flying, all the stuff that changes. So the chorus can show you--”

“Everything that’s still the same,” Danny finishes, nodding. “Yeah, man. That’s great. Good fan song, too. Nice way to remind ‘em that we like being onstage. That they feel like home too, sometimes.”

Tom pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. “I’m quite emotional now, Danny,” he informs Danny solemnly. Danny shoves Tom off the bed and asks politely if he is still feeling emotional now.

Dougie cackles, and Niall--

Niall thinks of a band that’s been together for a decade, that’s lived together, grown up together, taught each other how to shave, how to smoke, how to pull. A band that’s released hit after hit, and survived some flops as well. A band that puts on some of the most electrifying live shows ever purely because they feed off each other’s energy and unadulterated love of their music. A band that, above all, has never forgotten who they were or where they belonged because _there was always someone there to remind them._

There’s a reason Heart Never Lies is the perfect sample for this tune, Niall knows.

“Another year over, but we’re still together, “ Niall quotes, lost in thought. “‘s not always easy, but we’re here forever.”

The words take hold in his chest, blossom out. And suddenly, he can see the map of what this song will become.

“Those lyrics are copyrighted,” Danny says mock-sternly. “But ‘s alright on account of the fact that I never remember them anyway.”

This time it’s Dougie’s turn to knock Danny off the bed.

 

|

 

They write.

Danny tinkers with putting to music the words that Tom and Dougie create, and even distantly, Niall hears things he likes--sun and moon imagery, mirrored lyrics, a biography of travel and tiredness and documenting every last thing for fear that it’ll fade. The verses are in good hands.

For his part, Niall works on the bridge, doodling the word home in the center of his page and then spiraling outward like a brainstorm cloud, jotting down phrases and images that relate.

Being onstage, hot lights and camera flashes like stars in the sky, whirlwind mornings melting into endless nights, the way distance doesn’t feel like miles anymore but moments missed, the knowledge that he’s a blank space now in the daily lives of the people he’s left behind.

Home is the pin, and there are a million parts of himself spiderwebbing out of it, but what Niall focuses on is the truth that no matter how far he goes, he’s never going to be somewhere unfamiliar, not so long as he’s next to the four people who’ve carved their own places in him, become part of his whole.

“This isn’t a love song,” Niall says absently, but when Tom slants him a look over his glasses that asks, _isn’t it?_ Niall can’t find it within himself to disagree.

 

|

They cut a demo that night. Work round the clock like they always do, really. Manic sort of energy.

Song written, then recorded, a rough approximation of a tune that could be the defining moment of One Direction’s next album or another Galaxy Defender favorite on McFly’s, Niall can relax. He is proud of what they’ve created, loves that he’s found a way to put every jump and high-five and expression of gratitude into music. No matter who it goes to in the end, it’s a quality song, and he’s massively proud of himself that he’s been an equal in this process, that he’s poured just as much of himself into it as the other three.

But the truth is: even as Danny sang the chorus, even as Tom and Dougie alternated with Niall to sing some verses, Niall was already testing in his head who would sing what, whose voice would best capture the emotion of which part. He was already picturing the studio, another hotel room with pillows taped to the wall, mixer on a desk, producers lounging on the couch, Harry or Zayn or Liam or Louis trudging in and testing out various runs, various ways to deliver a word.

Niall gives the song to the record label, prepares himself for the others to hear it, and like always, he tells himself not to hope. But also like always, he sort of does.

Well.

It’s worked out okay so far, hasn’t it?

 

|

 

The song makes the album.

The label loves it on first listen, and loves that Danny will be producing it, that Niall’s written it with a band that’s getting their third wind in England, releasing an album of their own around the same time as One Direction will.

More importantly, the boys love it, too. The first listen-through is nervewracking for Niall, but Louis’ hand is warm on the nape of his neck as the opening chords sound, and it’s reassurance enough. At the chorus, Liam catches Niall’s wrist, squeezes, thumb pressing into the veins that lie beneath his skin. His eyes are shining, a half-smile tilting his mouth. Another verse, the one with flipping through the pages of memory, and Harry taps the leatherbound cover of his song journal, making an exaggerated kissy face at Niall, like he can’t believe how clever he is.

And best of all, when they get to the bridge, Zayn looks up. It’s not Zayn’s way, usually--takes him a few listens to really get excited about any song, to get a feel for where he’ll fit in, but this. His gaze catches Niall’s, and there’s a click, like a lock sliding into place. A slow smile spreads across his face, the sun cresting the clouds, and suddenly, Niall feels weightless.

Three years ago, he was given a gift that he’ll never be able to quantify. Maybe this is his way of trying to give a little bit of it back.

 

|

 

It’s Danny who texts Niall when the track listing for the album finally comes out.

 _Never forget it, this song x_ and Niall could make a joke about how Danny remembers lyrics for a band that isn’t even his, but there’s enough similar about their stories that Niall thinks Danny knows better than anyone would know how it feels to love something so much, to just be happy to be a part of it.

 _Thanks, mate,_ he texts back. _I won’t. Xx_

And he doesn’t think he ever will.

 

 

 

 

_finis_

**Author's Note:**

> For Taylor, who loved this enough for me to continue, and for Lisa, who introduced me to McFly in the first place. And to all my fellow McFly/1D lovers--it's tough out there, I know.


End file.
